Jazeera if you consider that terrorism. It was not Al Jazeera that divided the world into two camps. George W. Bush did it when he divided the world into an axis of good and an axis of evil” (1) . When talking about the experience of Al Jazeera in constructing its discourse, Ahmed Sheikh remarks the Holy Qur’an devoted space for the opposing view, even if it was the discourse of Satan. He believes that, in many cases, the Western media confined itself within the West- ern point of view. Al Jazeera believed it would be unprofessional, when covering the war in Afghanistan, for example, not to present Osama bin Laden’s point of view, while shutting itself away in echoing only his opponents’ and enemies’ side of the story. Whether his viewpoint is acceptable or otherwise, by this or that party, this is a different issue. Sheikh rejects the accusation that Al Jazeera provides a platform for terrorists, stating “the network has always been clear in attributing any statement to the person saying it, in other cases, it would add the phrase “Al Jazeera was unable to verify the authenticity of the material” (2) . The Network constantly puts the “other” at the centre of its coverage “whether it is reporting on the Taliban in Afghanistan, Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon, Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Houthis in Yemen, the Shias in Bahrain, or the Rohingya of Myanmar” (3) . In doing so, it has succeeded in injecting the geopoliti- cal reality of the region with new dynamics. It would not have succeed- ed without adopting a new approach in dealing with global events. With Al Jazeera, the news in the Arab world entered the era of p lu- ralism with regard to sources and viewpoints, thus shaking the grounds on which the traditional coverage in the Arab media was based. When looking at the reporting that contributed most to raising the popularity of Al Jazeera, we find those which needed exceptional courage in the field, to be at the top. Remarkable examples include the Palestinian in-
(1) Ibid.
(2) Ibid.
(3) Mohamed Zayani, “News Reporting and the Politics of Representation: Al Jazeera’s Cul- ture of Journalism” in Mapping the Al Jazeera Phenomenon : Twenty Years On , (Beirut: Al Jazeera Centre for Studies and Arab Scientific Publishers, 2016), p. 94.
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